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Prestone, in case you were wondering – I know I was! – is a company that makes car care products like coolants and lubricants. It’s a massive concern, supplying the likes of Ford and GM on their car assembly lines.

As motorsports go, rallying is probably one of the toughest tests going.

There are just so many variables, so much to go wrong. The nature of the sport, held on closed public roads, is punishing not just on the crews, drivers and co-drivers but also the car and its many different component parts.

Jumps, bumps, surface changes, rain and loose gravel are some of the many surface challenges – trees, walls, telegraph poles and hedges are there to cruelly (and painfully) punish mistakes.

There are no safety run-off gravel traps in rallying. No air fencing. No straw bales.

And that’s what I love about this mad sport. Driver and co-driver, flat out into the unseen, inches from spectators, millimetres from danger at three-figure speeds with the flame-spitting car dancing around from one opposite lock to the next.

You don’t have to be an expert to spot the difference in rally driver talent.

Watch any car circuit racing, from BTCC to F1 and all the drivers seem pretty samey with just tenths or hundredths of a second difference. I’d rather watch grass grow.

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RACE ACES: As motorsports go, rallying is probably one of the toughest tests going

Rally drivers need much more synaptic levels of car control. Not only are they constantly reading changing grip levels, the car set-up they chose before the stages started might not be the right one, so they have to adapt and drive around the problems.

On the Ulster Rally, we managed to spectate in some pretty amazing locations. Over the two days, one day wetter than an otter’s pocket and the other toasty warm, we watched a sixth gear flatout jump, a silage bale chicane approached in top gear, a lary-scary drifty left-hander and a 90-left with a steep uphill exit.

The other thing I like about rallying is, as a spectator, you do your own risk assessment.

Do I have anywhere to run if it all goes horribly wrong? And do I have something solid to hide behind?

If you’re not switched on, spectating is possibly more dangerous than competing and in today’s health and safety-smothered society I thoroughly approve of that freedom of choice. Darwinian, innit? Driving skill, car set-up and good pace notes shine through like a bank of Hella spotlights.

Watching each car come through at minute or so intervals allows you to visually back-to-back what you see. Did you hear a lift of the pedal? Was that a four-wheel drift? How late was that braking point?

But when you’re almost close enough to touch the passing cars, the variety of velocity is very, very easy to judge.

Don’t get me wrong, spectating in rallying takes a bit of effort. It’s a bit like a treasure hunt.

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PREPARATION: Getting the car ready

Map skills, timings, predictions and a lot of trudging. There’s no Easter egg at the end of it but the reward is a true heart-in-mouth spectacle, jaw on the floor aural and visual wonderment.

There were of course winners on the Ulster Rally – winners overall, winners in class and category. The British Rally Championship was the clear winner, though. Friendly, approachable, fascinating and OMG spectacular.

If your idea of motorsport spectating is peering through a chain link fence, across 70m of gravel trap at cars so far away they’re just dots in the distance, you need to make the effort, study some maps and come and spectate at a round of the Prestone BRC.